I’d been feeling conflicted about the name of this pet project of mine for a while: Waking Youth. To start with, of course, I’m not getting any younger. I started the podcast in 2020, in my early twenties, called to explore alternative social scripts that would better align with the kind of adult human being I hoped to shape myself into.
The idea for the name came from Waking Life, by Richard Linklater. Like the film’s protagonist, who wanders from dream to dream, engaging in a series of philosophical conversations with strangers while discerning whether his experience is real or just another layer of dreaming, I too felt called to converse with human beings to pose, aloud and together, the question of what it means to live a waking life.
Since Waking Life was already the name of the film and a festival in Portugal, I went for Waking Youth. I saw—still see—myself as part of a new generation who’s seeking to live by more conscious social scripts than the ones handed down by most of the elders of our western civilization.
The more I grew up, the more I realized that my living questions had less to do with age and more to do with a way of being; with a practice of existential curiosity, of intellectual courage and spiritual discernment. Why are we alive? What life am I here to live? What work is mine to do? And who are we being called to become as a collective?
I tried, for a moment, to resignify the podcast’s name. The “youth” part of Waking Youth could be a metaphor, yes. I’d heard the idea before and liked it, that as a civilization we are in a developmental stage akin to adolescence. Even now, I read the tweets of some of the leaders of our institutions and think to myself: Are these guys thirteen?
I pitched this new meaning of Waking Youth to listeners and guests: we are the ones in our western culture seeking to live into our wiser maturity; the ones who think it’s time grow up. And each time, I felt a little more contracted, a little less convinced. Too… complicated. Too… disrespectful to thirteen year-old boys! Plus, most people still assumed it was a youth-focused project.
Six years after I started Waking Youth, the time has come to evolve it’s name. I brainstormed. I reached out to friends. I distilled the essence of what I feel drawn to research again and again, through podcast interviews, through writing, through educational programs, through life in community: consciousness? maturity? self development? social transformation? One word kept coming to mind: wisdom.
After many lists, conversations with humans and robots, and domain checks, the name became obvious: Wiser Now. Like me, Waking Youth is older and a little wiser. It’s more careful with terms like “waking” and “awake”, which have not only become clichés, but also carry cultural baggage in a polarized society quick to dismiss (when not mock) anything that sounds “woke”. It’s curious about people’s stories of becoming: how they became wiser than yesterday, and how they continue to be invited to mature. It longs for a wiser collective reality, a wiser civilization, a wiser world. In other words, it’s most interested in cultivating the kind of presence, authority, and compassion necessary to navigate the pain and paradox of life without growing cynical, detached or insane. Wiser Now. What do you think?
What to Expect
The name of this project has changed, the work I feel called to do hasn’t. Even though I believe a wiser life is one of less expectation and more surrender, you can expect to see more of what you’ve seen here until now:
Podcast interviews with human beings I consider wise in some way; conversations to accompany us in our pursuit of wisdom. I’m currently preparing a series of episodes on the topic of community, including a conversation with former member of Tamera and activist, Martin Winiecki, as well as with the wide community of Traditional Dream Factory.
Essays, or what I’m now naming Field Notes, my lived and written experiment with truth and wisdom. Expect musings on life in community, writing, collapse-readiness, culture, and more.
Online Integral Yoga classes held every Wednesday at 8.30am Portugal time and Saturday at 9am, where we ground our pursuit of wisdom in the body.
Online and in-person programs where we explore the questions that connect and animate us together. In the past, I hosted a book club around ‘Letters to a Young Poet’, and an in-person retreat based on the book ‘Let Your Life Speak’. I’m now sketching an online program that brings some of my favorite books into conversation with one another, combined with introspective communal practices to help us listen louder to our inner teachers. I’d love, for example, to put Rilke and Parker Palmer in conversation: about vocation, about solitude and community. Let me know if it resonates.
What else? I’m currently living in—and helping set up—Mosaic Village, a small intentional community of eight adults and six children, all of us called to create a culture more courageously grounded in love as practice. It’s not always easy to show up for all my personal and professional commitments when so much of my energy is invested here—strategy and governance meetings, work on the land, emotional circles that are both confronting and deeply life-giving. I’ll be sharing more of this journey, sometimes in writing, sometimes through audio or video, as a way of making sense of my experience, for myself, and anyone who’s curious to join me.
If you’d like to follow this community adventure more closely, and to have access to more intimate essays and news from me, please let me know by leaving a comment or writing me an email. In addition to offering monthly podcast interviews and written updates, I’m testing a paid subscription and would like to offer it for free to founding subscribers like you as I figure out exactly what is valuable to share.
Excited to step into this next chapter of Wiser Now with you.
With love,
Carlota
This was a wonderful read. It’s so inspiring and eye opening to see how you are living in alignment with your values 🩵 thank you for sharing